September 08, 2011

A quick glance tells you Ron Paul eeked out the win, just beating Mitt Romney. Closer examination, however, shows you that in fact Ron Paul received twice as many votes as Romney.

Okay, I thought, their chart graphic is wildly off the mark, so maybe that was just a mistake and they've since corrected it. So I went back to the MSNBC poll page myself, and captured this image (as of 3pm Thursday):

Okay, now Paul is seen as being way in the lead, ahead of Romney. Only... wait a minute, now Paul has 53.5% to Romney's 16%, which is more than three times as many votes. And that top green bar sure ain't three times longer than Romney's bar. So it's still effed.

I'm reminded of this hilarious Daily Show bit (well worth clicking) on how Ron Paul is ignored in the major media. They are really obvious about it. Apparently the people who watch TV news are mostly asleep at the wheel and simply don't notice much, because there's a gross unfairness here which even a child could spot. It ought to piss people off, and it ought to pique their interest as to why the Establishment just hates this guy.

No, he won't win... and thank goodness, because they'd kill him as fast as you can say "military industrial complex" or "corporate fascism".

September 07, 2011

One of the first articles I ever read about gold had to do with the gold which apparently disappeared in the wreckage of the World Trade Center. It seems, based on newspaper articles, that there had been $950 million worth of gold and silver under WTC 4 on 9/11. It was located a few floors below street level, protected within bomb-proof vaults. While severely damaged, WTC 4 did not completely collapse, and the metal should have been fully recoverable, even if it had melted. Gold and silver are fairly inert and wouldn't have reacted with other materials.

Giuliani, however, was quoted saying that around $230 million worth of precious metals had been recovered. The question was, what happened to the other gold and silver? Doesn't that leave hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of precious metals missing? Had there been a heist of massive proportions, under cover of the attacks on that day?

One answer, the one that seems most likely to me, is not as thrilling. These vaults were apparently Comex vaults (Comex = commodities exchange). In the metals investment world, it's widely known that the Comex does not have all the gold and silver they claim to have. They allow people to think they're buying gold or silver, when in fact the physical metal they believe they're buying does not actually exist in Comex vaults. See, usually people will buy and sell this supposed gold and/or silver without ever taking real possession of the stuff, because that's a major hassle-- you need Brinks trucks and insurance and you pay fees, and they don't make it convenient by any means. Basically, all these people think they own metal, but they're just taking Comex's word for it. "Oh sure," Comex says, "we've got your 100 ounces of gold here, right in our vaults... it's got your name on it, scout's honor." But the GATA organization and some recent testimony provide evidence that Comex doesn't have that metal. Because (in recent years) only about 1% of purchasers actually demand to take physical possession for themselves, the Comex has never been definitively caught in its lies. It's like a bank that only has $1 for every $100 customers believe they have on deposit. (And don't think that isn't happening too!)

This 9/11 story of the missing metals suggests that even back in 2001 -- when gold and silver were dirt cheap and nobody wanted them, when demand was almost non-existent and you could hardly give the stuff away -- even back then it would appear that the Comex had claimed to possess more physical gold and silver than it really had. Specifically, they had claimed to have 3 or 4 times more than they did. Today, that recent testimony I mentioned above suggests that they claim to have 100 timesmore than they actually do. And that, my friends, is a balloon waiting to be popped. The jig will be up soon.

A heist makes a great Hollywood movie, but I'm afraid this is just your generic Wall St fraud.

August 29, 2011

If you cut out a chocolate bar each day you will lose only one-third of the weight that experts had thought. For decades, doctors have based their advice to those who want to lose weight on the assumption that cutting 500 calories a day will see the weight fall off at the rate of 1lb a week.

"This is wrong," Kevin Hill, of the National Institutes of Health in the United States, said. "It does not happen." The error has arisen because the calculation did not take account of changes in metabolism as weight falls. The body adjusts to reductions in energy intake (calories eaten) by slowing its energy output (calories expended). The result is that forgoing that daily chocolate bar containing 250 calories will lead to about 25lb of weight loss if it is sustained for three years, much less than the 78lb predicted by the old dieting assumption.

I don't go on restrictive diets, but on behalf of those who do, may I say: "Whoops!" doesn't bloody well cover it. Maybe they should've based their claims about weight loss on some kind of... oh, I don't know, empirical evidence?

Mainstream medicine has apparently been running with an untested theory. In theory eating 500 fewer calories per day should equal 1 pound of weight loss weekly. Here's how the Mayo Clinic puts it:

Because 3,500 calories equals about 1 pound (0.45 kilogram) of fat, you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you take in to lose 1 pound. So if you cut 500 calories from your typical diet each day, you'd lose about 1 pound a week (500 calories x 7 days = 3,500 calories).

It sounds simple, right? And that's the whole problem. Nothing in the human body is simple.

Researchers and doctors must have seen, over the years, that things didn't seem to be working out that way. But apparently, when the data put their hypothesis in doubt, they throw out the data. That is, if people aren't losing weight at the expected rate, then they must be lying about what they're eating, i.e. the data are flawed. Doctors didn't see that the equation wasn't true in actual human experience; they just saw fat liars. People do lie (prolifically!) about what they eat and drink, but someone surely should've gotten to the bottom of this much earlier, and realized the mistake. In the meantime, many thousands of overweight people who were diligently cutting calories have been disdained as fibbers by their doctors, on the basis of their less-than-predicted weight loss.

Medical folks should've known better for two reasons. First, the human body is extraordinarily complex, and "calories in, calories out" was always an absurdly, ridiculously simplistic idea (e.g. see this post and this one). Secondly, didn't they consider the hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution, during which starvation was a common danger? And surmise, therefore, that our bodies just might have ways of protecting energy reserves in the face of a declining food supply? Their simple equation, in which 500 calories x 7 = 1 pound fat, assumed that our bodies would not react to a sudden loss of 500 calories / day, but would simply burn through energy reserves to compensate. That didn't account -- obviously -- for the possibility that our bodies might find a way to conserve energy. There is very little respect for nature in modern medicine, else they might have realized what an asisine assumption that was.

August 18, 2011

"The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them which we are missing."

July 27, 2011

Check out this post, which has a photo gallery of currencies which collapsed-- i.e. money which died. The first example is a 10 Billion Dinar note. When a government is printing currency with "10 Billion" on it you know things are not good. I'm reminded of a guy in Zimbabwe who held up a sign: "Starving Billionaire".

One thing to notice is that it's a pretty long list, and it's by no means complete. There were two instances of French hyperinflation, but only French note is in the list. The Continental (currency of the American colonies) is not there, nor is the Confederate currency. Poland isn't in the photo list, but they have experienced hyperinflation. A few early Chinese paper failures are not there; I believe the Chinese invented the concept of totally unbacked currency, and were no doubt the first to experience a fiat currency collapse.

Among currencies that are not backed by anything, meaning that governments may freely create as much of the stuff as they like, a sudden loss of confidence in that currency is a common historical event, and an inevitable one. People argue about the life expectancy of an unbacked currency, but I've not seen estimates above 40 years, and the US dollar has been unbacked for 40 years next month. The paper dollar is past its life expectancy.

Maybe worrying about hyperinflation seems like doomer or survivalist thinking to some, but hyperinflation is neither a rare nor a surprising event from a historical perspective. Just look at those photos.

July 20, 2011

This is a horrifying but interesting article on the use of anti-psychotic medications in the US. It begins:

Has America become a nation of psychotics?

Apparently, in 2008, anti-psychotics surpassed every other category of drug -- even cholesterol-lowering statin drugs -- to become the number one most prescribed type of medication in the US.

Some other shocking statistics from the article:

In a recent study, 1 in 5 children who saw a psychiatrist came away with a prescription for an anti-psychotic drug.

Because bipolar disorder can be treated with the newer (still patented) anti-psychotics, diagnoses of bipolar disorder in children rose by 40 times between 1994 and 2003.

18 of the 20 psychiatrists who wrote the current clinical treatment guidelines for depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia had ties to drug companies.

The number of Americans now classified as disabled by mental illness, enough to qualify for Social Security benefits, has more than doubled between 1987 and 2007, from 1 in 184 to 1 in 76. This casts doubt on the efficacy of all new (expensive, patented) psychiatric drugs in general.

Anti-psychotics are inadequately studied in children, and may cause obesity and diabetes. As with many psychiatric drugs there is also a risk that in a small minority of people they may cause violence and/or suicide.

Yep, there's a mass psychosis going on here, but it's not the sort the shrinks are seeing in their patients.

July 19, 2011

I have to confess that I really hate saying that I'm "juicing". It seems like such a yuppie / granola thing to be doing, and I didn't grow up in that kind of community. That said, my advice is "don't knock it till you try it."

For one thing, I seem to have solved my lack of appetite issue. Drink about 16oz of fruit and veggie juice and less than an hour later, I'm starving for eggs, chicken, bread, and rice. (I doubt this is typical though, or I don't see how anyone could possibly do a 10-day juice fast.) I'm all for Weston A Price and steak and eggs for breakfast, but personally I seem better off starting with juice, and moving on to the heavier foods later.

Secondly, while I write this I'm sipping some juice that is actually really good. I made it from two green apples, three carrots (peeled), a pickling cucumber, a small lemon (peeled), and a hunk of watermelon (without the hardest part of the rind). It's pretty tart, but it's very tasty.

Third, it's making me want more fresh food. I've made salsa twice in as many days, which is a good way to get raw garlic and onion (and in my case, oodles of cilantro, also a particularly healthy plant).

The mean green stuff (featured in the documentary I've mentioned) is okay, but my advice is to start with only 4 kale leaves the first time you make it, and to be generous with the ginger and double the lemon or use a couple of small limes in place of the lemon. [UPDATE: I think that kale was already getting old, some of the leaves were starting to yellow. I used fresh, very dark green kale in another juice and it did not have the same bitterness.] I also liked it better when I added a pinch of salt. It didn't make it taste salty, but apparently salt is a flavor enhancer even when you're not aware of it (thus its presence in some fruit salad recipes). I've made it twice so far (second time was a double batch) and I'll keep tweaking it. Kale seems to be in most juicing recipes, I think not only because of the high mineral content but because of the protein. But if you're not fasting, you can get the protein elsewhere and you could use spinach or other less bitter greens instead.

Wait a minute, I thought. Protein from where? I mean yes, I knew veggies contained small amounts of protein, but they're really small amounts, right? And mostly that's in the root vegetables, surely? Where do you get 6 grams out of protein out of a couple cups of watermelon, a cup of blueberries, and a half dozen kale leaves?

I decided to look up some veggies and fruits at the USDA website. It turns out that a cup of chopped raw kale has 2.2g protein. That may not sound like much, but consider that it only has 34 calories. A large orange has 1.7g protein and 86 calories. A cup of spinach has less than a gram of protein (0.86g) but it only has 7 calories (!). A cup of raw carrots is over a gram of protein (1.2g) and 52 calories.

A cup of blueberries, raspberries, or cherries each has over a gram of protein and less than 100 calories, while a cup of blackberries is 2g protein for only 62 calories. A cup of chopped green pepper has 1.3g protein and only 30 calories.

An adult needs something like 40-60g protein per day (a number which is still in dispute). If you were eating a variety of fruits and vegetables and aiming for even 1,500 calories per day, I've no doubt you'd get enough protein. The question is whether it's reasonable to attempt to consume that many calories from raw produce-- sheesh! Juicing would appear to be the only way you could consume and digest that much plant material, but I'm not at all sure that 6 16-oz juices per day (as recommended in the "Reboot" program) is going to be enough calories. Ten days of very reduced calorie intake might make your body go into famine mode, causing it to lower your metabolism and reduce energy expenditures.

On the other hand, maybe it's not all about calories, maybe it's about nutrient intake. If you're getting protein and oodles of micronutrients then maybe your body won't freak out (although I would certainly eat some olives and avocadoes because you can't go without fat).

One interpretation of obesity is that it's a disease of malnutrition. People's bodies want them to eat more and more because they're not getting the nutrition they need. The trouble is that you can eat as much McDonald's as you'd like and you'll never get the nutrients you need. Perhaps if you're getting flooded with vitamins, enzymes, and phytonutrients your body will be less sensitive to the gross number of calories, and will be more than satisfied on half a dozen large, raw juices. Surprisingly, the protein content may not be far off from the recommended amounts.

July 16, 2011

That's the name of a documentary I somehow happened upon on Netflix instant play. It starts out a little slow, but the second half features an extraordinary story of a seriously obese truck driver who turns his health (and his life) around completely.

Yes, the documentary is based around a "fad" diet of 100% raw juices, but they don't suggest people do this forever. They suggest that people do a "re-boot" of several days, or longer if so desired. Both the guys in the documentary did this with medical supervision for 60+ days, and had no adverse reactions. All the results were extremely positive.

The food options for most Americans are overwhelmingly unhealthy. Even the "not from concentrate" OJ my kids like, seemingly a pretty healthy item, is still pasteurized and therefore many of the plant nutrients are destroyed. Most baked products use white flour, most sugars are ultra-refined white sugars, the beef is from "cows" that eat grain (thus making them almost a different animal), and so on. The truck driver is an extreme example-- a guy whose job largely prevents exercise or anything remotely resembling healthy eating-- but it's only a moderate exaggeration of what people in midwestern towns are up against. Nowhere to walk, nowhere to get a really good salad, nowhere to get fresh, organic produce of the kinds humans evolved on (although farmer's markets are changing that)... but lots of greasy spoons where $6 gets you about four meals' worth of hash browns fried in Crisco, eggs, and white toast.

Despite all the above pessimism, which is how I normally feel about American food, the movie is really inspiring. We do still have choices! And boy, do they make a difference.

July 07, 2011

Let's face it: any bargain seems to look good to you, as long as it kills people. That makes you tough, I guess. You have a list of Americans to assassinate. You have six wars going, and more in the pipeline. You've made clear that Israel murdering unarmed aid workers trying to reach Gaza would be A-OK with you. And "pain" is just the price that other people will have to pay to do without healthcare, food, a roof, a coat, or -- for that matter -- hope. Of all your slogans, we seem to be left with Audacity alone, standing by itself among the ruins.